Write up of the NumFOCUS grant to improve pandas benchmarks and diversity
By Lucy Jiménez and Dorothy Kabarozi B.
We want to share our experience working on Improvements to the ASV benchmarking framework and diversity efforts sponsored by NumFOCUS to the pandas project.
This grant focused on two aspects: the first one is to improve the asv library, a tool used by benchmarking Python packages and used by pandas; this project was unmaintained, and the codebase was quite old; additionally, it didn't adhere to modern standards, had Python 2 compatibility code that could be removed, and also the CI could be improved. The second aspect is encouraging more underrepresented groups to contribute to open source projects. This grant was held over 10 weeks, working around 20 hours a week. It was developed by Dorothy Kabarozi B. from Uganda and Lucy Jiménez from Colombia, under the mentoring of Marc Garcia.
Why were we part of the grant?
Even when we come from different backgrounds, Dorothy from systems engineering and Lucy from computational chemistry, we have always been interested in participating and contributing to open source software projects. For that reason, we have been running the PyLadies meetups in our communities (PyLadies Kampala, PyLadies Colombia) and have always been on the lookout for any opportunities that lead us to contribute.
It all happened through Marc Garcia; he had put out a call through a post on social media to mentor ladies from diverse backgrounds. Dorothy got to be part of the pandas mentorship group. At the same time, Lucy was co-organizer of the SciPy Latam conference, and it is from here she met Marc, who was the speaker at that conference, and through this mutual connection, we were able to learn about this benchmarks grant.
In brief, by attending conferences, meetups, and social media, you can make connections and links that will lead you to these opportunities.
Learning from the source code
At the beginning of the grant, we started from the basics. We noticed that we could improve our skills in managing Git and GitHub. For example, we had some troubles with the git workflow, so we had to read and practice more about it. One of the valuable resources was the explanation from Marc about how to make an open source contribution, which we invite you to take a look at it.
We learned a lot from the source code and gained immense knowledge about best practices and code quality through this grant. We have been working on: updating the code to improve the style to follow the PEP-8 guidelines, removing Python 2 compatibility code and six dependencies, and finding unused code and removing it. We also learned about GitHub actions, and we started building the CI on GitHub actions for the asv package; for that we have been working on add linting with Flake8, testing with pytest, building docs, and running CI on different python versions.
Additionally, we were able to identify bugs in the source code, review pull request from other contributors, and create new issues, something we thought only maintainers could do but not contributors. Finally, not only is reviewing the code itself a learning experience, but also the structure and folder hierarchy in the project started to be more transparent.
Our experience
For this grant, we had a fantastic Mentor, Marc Garcia. He was always willing to share his knowledge, explain unclear concepts and share helpful feedback. Whenever we would implement that feedback, it felt easier to work on more issues faster. We felt the growth from the time we started on this project, and we will carry it along as we contribute to more open source projects; this all goes back to Marc for his fantastic mentorship. It is also important to note that we received feedback from other contributors, stakeholders, and core devs during this process, which gave us a broader look at the work in open source projects.
We also built a strong teamwork partnership. We helped each other a lot as we had numerous one-on-one calls to understand the tasks better. We always looked for ways to support each other from the technical side and encouraged each other when needed. For us, it was professional and human growth.
Running an open source software sprint
The knowledge and experience acquired in this process allowed us to organize two virtual sprints. The events were carried out in the company of local PyLadies communities; the first one was on February 26th with PyLadies Kampala and on March 21 with PyLadies Colombia.
While organizing these events, we learned how to organize and conduct a virtual sprint. Some participants in the sprint ultimately had no idea about open source, and it was great explaining open source concepts and taking them through the Git workflow. Finally, they were able to make their first contribution. We learned how to follow up on contributors, helping them along the way until their PRs were merged and by reviewing their contributions on GitHub.
The most outstanding achievement was mentoring new contributors and sharing the knowledge acquired from this grant with others participants in our respective communities. Most new contributors after the experience have gone ahead to apply for outreach and the upcoming Google Summer of Code to apply the skills they learned from these sprints.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we learned a lot from this experience from the code part, the workflow on the open source projects, how to be resilient in difficult moments, and encouraging more women and people from our local communities to contribute to open source projects.
Finally, if you want to be part of an open source project, we invite you to check out GitHub repos for different projects you are interested in and search for the easy issues to work on and get started. Also, you can contact the maintainers of the projects with specific questions, search for the open source communities in your country or contact us for more help.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to NumFOCUS for giving us this support through Small Development Grants and Marc for the excellent mentoring he generously gave us throughout these weeks.
We are looking forward to contributing more and impacting our communities and the open source community!
If you want to know more, please don't hesitate to connect with us through these channels: